Be Mine

Product Information

You might be reluctant to go along on such a morbid — and very dusty — ride, but you'd be missing one of the most singular and affecting on-the-road stories in the American canon. Happiness can still be yours, ole chap; since happiness is not a pure element like Manganese or Boron, but an alloy of metals both precious and base, and durable. or “Al’s,” as he jokingly refers to it), participates in an experimental protocol at the Mayo Clinic, Frank picks him up in a rented R.

Be Mine by Richard Ford | Waterstones

This may have some point in a five-novel portrait of Frank Bascombe, but in a stand-alone story it really serves little purpose. One more thing Frank has in common with Harry (and Philip Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman): He belongs to the most overexposed cohort in history, the heterosexual white male strutting through postwar America. The story of a put-upon everyman, it is a sad and quietly devastating portrait of middle-aged life in suburbia.It is, though, quite a vehicle for Ford to talk about things and situations that may make us uncomfortable and his humanity and self-awareness are on display. Threadgill is an engaging narrator, touching on racism in the Chicago of his youth, his military service in Vietnam—one band performance is interrupted by a Vietcong raid—and his compositional process. Ford takes another snapshot of America in the days before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out; the novel finishes with “the long plague months” at the end of Paul’s life.

Be Mine by Richard Ford | Book review | The TLS

Purportedly a rediscovered ancient epic, it’s about the transformative power of human creativity, the enduring ability of art to shape the world. The no-longer-married Frank is now Paul's caretaker and is trying his best to manage his son's physical and mental deterioration as they relocate temporarily to Rochester, MN. In case we, like Hoffman, miss the point, Be Mine, the fifth and (I don’t think it really spoils anything to say) final Bascombe book, begins with a prologue entitled Happiness.A line in the novella The Run of Yourself reads: “Things happen that seem life-altering, then everything grinds down to being bearable – sometimes slightly better,” which felt resonant in this pandemic moment. And once it leaves the house and it’s out in the world, you can certainly cut me to the quick by saying something mean to me. Richard Ford is talking, via Zoom, about his recent move from Maine, in the northeastern corner of the USA, where he lived when I last spoke to him in 2020, to the southern city of New Orleans. It is a meandering tale, not much happens and as such is perhaps a little long - hence 4 rather than 5 stars.